Ungodly: A Novel (The Goddess War) (28 page)

She started to take off her cardigan when an insect crawled up her nose.

“Ungh!” She swatted and exhaled as hard as she could, trying to stop the million legs from scrambling up her nostril. Any moment and the bug would turn, take the down chute, and head for her throat. She’d be able to hack it up onto her tongue and spit it out. The thought filled her with adrenaline and disgust. All those legs in her mouth, clinging to her lips.

Cassandra stumbled to her vanity dresser and stared into the mirror, expecting to see the back third of a red-brown centipede hanging from her face.

There was nothing there. And the bug had settled down inside, too.

She tilted her face up, more scared than she could remember being in a while, bracing herself for bug legs nestled firmly up her nose.

Nothing.

“I really am going crazy.”

(No. Not crazy. Just unused to having us inside your head.)

Cassandra lurched back from the mirror. That voice. She recognized the way it boomed from the center of her brain.

“The Moirae.”

(Not all of us. Only Clotho. And now Lachesis.)

“Now?” Cassandra asked, and felt another bug start to fight its way in, this time through her ear. That was worse than through her nose, though she hadn’t been able to imagine worse moments before. It drilled and squiggled and scratched its way right past her eardrum, and she couldn’t tell how many legs it had but it felt like a lot. By the time Lachesis finished working her way in, Cassandra lay curled up and sweating on the carpet.

She took a breath and her stomach clenched in a hard dry heave. Clotho and Lachesis waited for it to subside. Cassandra could feel them sitting behind her eyes, their presence as heavy as two fat, furred spiders bouncing on a web.

(Get up, Cassandra.)

Their voices wove together as one, so loud and encompassing that Cassandra mistook it for her own thought. She’d hooked her elbow onto the vanity table and dragged herself halfway onto her knees before she realized it wasn’t.

“Get out of my head.”

(Not just now. Now we need your legs. Ours have become … unreliable.)

A flash then, of skin twisted and melted together, bones joining to other bones as tributaries into a larger river. The image couldn’t be hers. She’d never seen that part of the Moirae. The legs uncovered. And even in her darkest thoughts, she couldn’t have conjured something so painfully wrong.

“What do you want my legs for?” Cassandra looked at her reflection. A single dot of blood hung on her upper lip. She touched her ear and her fingers came away dry.

(To ferry a message.)

“Forget it.” She wiped the blood away on her sleeve. “Get out.” Except she didn’t mean it. Not really. The longer Clotho and Lachesis sat inside her mind, the more at home they seemed. It wasn’t crowded, or an invasion. It was company. When one or the other or both of them took control of her legs and stood, Cassandra went pleasantly slack inside.

Sort of lovely, to not have to do things on my own.

(Yes. Very lovely. You are very lovely, Cassandra.)

Cassandra smiled into the mirror. One half of each eye had turned green.

“Should we go to Athena’s, then?”

*   *   *

Hermes’ fever held steady. He didn’t wake. Aside from swallowing and shivering when Athena spoon-fed him bowl after bowl of hot broth that evening, he hadn’t moved at all.

“Hermes,” Athena whispered. “Can you hear me?”

She listened so intently for a response that she jumped at the sound of Odysseus’ shoes on the floor.

“Come on,” he said, and squeezed her shoulder. “Let’s get you some air.”

He led her upstairs into her bedroom and straight through to the widow’s walk. The cool night hit her square in the chest. Odysseus moved to the railing beside her.

It had been tense in the house with Hermes ill, and tense between Athena and Odysseus. The ghost of Calypso was around every corner. Sometimes, Athena passed Odysseus in the kitchen and felt the pressure of a hundred things keeping them apart. Other times, such as there on the walk with him, they felt closer than skin to skin.

“We shouldn’t stay up here long,” she said. “Ares is out running the wolves, and I don’t want Hermes to wake up alone.”

Odysseus said nothing. But it hung in the air anyway. Hermes might not wake up. She might never hear his annoying, wiseass voice ever again. The fever was high and mean. A mortal would have been dead hours ago.

Odysseus bent his head and kissed Athena’s shoulder. He turned her toward him and kissed her cheeks, her closed eyes, and finally her lips. He slipped his arms around her and held her tight, kissing her deeper until her mind was a blank, until she was nothing but body.

“It’s not wrong,” he said. “I was just afraid.”

“It is wrong,” she said, but she kissed him again.

A branch snapping underfoot made them draw apart. It was Cassandra, walking slowly across the grass.

“Good thing Ares is in the woods,” Odysseus said, and waved, but Cassandra didn’t look up. She didn’t look at much of anything.

Athena’s hackles raised with every step the girl took. Just before Cassandra disappeared from view, her eyes flickered to the widow’s walk.

Brown eyes gone half green.

She grabbed Odysseus’ arm.

“That’s not Cassandra.”

*   *   *

They dashed down the stairs. Odysseus grabbed a sword off the wall and made a good show of being ready to use it.

“What do you mean it’s not Cassandra?” he asked. “Who the bloody hell is it, then?”

Athena leaned down and, as gently as she could, shoved the couch and Hermes away from the door as far as it would go.

“I don’t know who exactly. But I think it’s the Moirae. Wearing her face.”

Whoever it was knocked. Three times. Odysseus swore. Athena shook the fist out of her hand and walked to the entryway.

She took a deep breath, ready to knock the Moirae flat on Cassandra’s ass. But when the door opened, Cassandra simply stood there without a jacket on. Wet dirt and trampled grass stuck to her bare feet. Beneath the weak house lights it was hard to tell that something was wrong with her eyes. If she hadn’t looked up at the balcony, Athena might not have noticed at all.

“What is it?” Odysseus asked, and the thing wearing Cassandra smiled a wrong smile, as though it hadn’t figured out quite how to use her face.

“Aren’t you going to invite us in?”

“Who are you?” Athena asked.

“Clotho,” a voice that wasn’t quite Cassandra’s voice replied.

“And Lachesis,” added a voice that wasn’t quite Cassandra’s voice but wasn’t exactly the first voice, either.

Athena waited a long beat before asking, “But not Atropos?”

They shook their head.

“It is she we come to discuss. But we have to hurry. We don’t have much time.”

*   *   *

Cassandra sat mute inside her mind. She felt Clotho and Lachesis’ reactions as if they were her own, and heard every thought they had. Athena looked so frightened. She wished she could tell her that there was no guile in these Moirae. That they meant her no harm.

Walking into the house, she saw Odysseus standing in front of the couch where Hermes lay. A sword was in his hand, gripped tight. It seemed somehow amusing to Cassandra, and she wanted to wave to him from inside her mind. Inside her mind, as through a window. But when she tried, Lachesis pressed her hand gently down.

*   *   *

Clotho and Lachesis. The Moira of Life and the Moira of Destiny. They maneuvered Cassandra’s body poorly; one eye tracked later than the other, and the way they walked had a strange side-to-side tilt. Beneath the lights of her living room, Athena saw that strands of red and silver-blonde hair had twisted into Cassandra’s brown.

“What are you doing with Cassandra?” Odysseus asked. “Is she all right?”

“She is fine. Here with us. We would not harm her.” They looked around the house, jerking Cassandra’s head like a puppet.

Athena wanted them out. Out of her living room, and out of Cassandra, and she wanted them out now.

“Then what do you want?” Athena asked.

“We want to tell you what is.” They made their way to the middle of the room and stopped, seemingly content to stand and go no farther.

“Tell us what is?” Odysseus asked. “That’s all? After you tried to kill us?”

“We did not. But some of you have died.” Cassandra’s head turned, a little too far. A joint popped, and her head turned back quickly, as though the Moirae were surprised by the limit. “It is Atropos who kills you. Atropos who would kill us all.”

Athena remembered how the Moirae had looked on Olympus. Clotho and Lachesis were two deflating balloons, bleeding into their dark-headed sister.

“All this time we have struggled with her in secret,” they said. “Our sister is sick. And when the Moirae of Death is ill, she spreads her sickness down. To all her leaves and branches.” They peered past Odysseus, to Hermes, lying still on the couch.

“He’s unwell,” they said. “He’ll be gone soon.”

Fast, angry tears blurred Athena’s vision. A fat lot of nerve they had, coming into her house and telling her that her dying brother was dying. A fat lot of nerve, coming to them now. When it was too late.

“We need to kill her,” said Clotho, or Lachesis, or perhaps both. “Kill Atropos.”

“So kill her,” Athena said.

“She is weakened. But she will not go easily.”

“So kill her harder.”

The Moirae inside Cassandra frowned. They looked at Athena the way a parent looks at a child they’ve just discovered has been spoiled.

“You have other brothers,” they said. “Other sisters. Think of them.”

Athena wanted to tell them where they could stick it, but only clenched her fists.

“You’ll help us now,” Clotho and Lachesis said. “You and Cassandra. You’ll help us kill Atropos to win your lives back. And in exchange for your lives…”

In her mind Athena ransacked the house for any weapon she could use to batter the Moirae out of Cassandra’s body. They came with balls the size of grapefruits, demanding help and payment for their lives besides.

“What the hell can you possibly want?” Athena asked.

“After Atropos falls,” the Fates sighed. “Cassandra will join us.”

“Join you?” Odysseus said. “What do you mean, ‘join you’?”

“The Moirae are three. Life, Destiny, and Death. We can cut Death out. But Death must replace her.”

Athena looked hard into Cassandra’s eyes, trying to see any of her in there. Could she hear? Was she trying to fight while they stood there talking? Was she afraid? Angry? But no matter where Athena looked, all she saw were the Moirae. They’d invaded Cassandra’s head and taken over, and before they were through, they would take the rest of her, too.

“She is ours, anyway,” the Moirae said, and shrugged with Cassandra’s shoulders. “Our perfect creation, brought into being by us, given the gift of prophecy by us, and touched with the hand of Death. It was all put into motion so long ago.”

The Moirae pursed Cassandra’s lips and crooned inwardly to her, as if crooning to a pretty bird they’d recently swallowed.

A perfect creation. But that’s not what Athena saw. Athena saw a girl with too many lives inside. Too many pains and wrongs and losses. A girl her brother Aidan had loved and ruined, but mostly loved.

I promised to take care of her. And even though she hates me, she’s still my friend.

“Would you take me instead?” Athena asked.

“What? No. No, they won’t take you instead!” Odysseus stared at her as though she’d lost her mind. She wanted to look at him, to try to explain, but if she did that she’d never be able to say what she had to.

“I can take lives as well as she can,” Athena said. “I’m strong. You can give me the sight.”

“Understand what you offer, goddess,” said Clotho. “To join us is to become us. To join us is to disappear.”

And that’s what you intended for Cassandra. To put her through all this shit, just to lose herself anyway.

“Of course I understand,” Athena said. “I’m a goddess. Not a stolen girl.”

The Moira wearing Cassandra considered the trade. And nodded. An obsolete goddess of battle would become the Moira of Death. It was more than fair, on all sides.

“Athena, you can’t do this,” Odysseus said. “How do we even know they’re telling the truth?”

“As a token of good faith,” Clotho said in her Cassandra-but-not-Cassandra voice, “we will tell you a very great secret.”

“What’s that?” Athena asked.

“Achilles is here. Now. In Cassandra’s house.”

23

ACHILLES

“Don’t. Linger.” Andie brushed Henry’s fingers away from her bare belly. “On my scars.”

“Why not?” he asked, and walked his fingers right back where they’d started. Four clean cuts slashed across her belly, gently pink.

“Because I don’t like to think about them. I rub fricking Bio Oil on them twice a day hoping they’ll disappear.”

But they never would. They would remain, shiny and smooth, with small pockmarks at the edges where the stitches had grown into the skin. Henry hadn’t realized how close he’d come to losing her that day in the road, when the Nereid raked its claws across her stomach. Nobody had until it was over, and Hermes noticed all the blood that had soaked into her shirt.

“So close,” he whispered.

“Yeah. Close to spilling my guts out across the hood of your old Mustang.” She covered her eyes with one hand, reclined on his pillow. She talked tough, but her stomach clenched beneath his palm. It had to be a strange thing, to know what it felt like to almost be disemboweled. Henry could relate. He knew what it felt like to almost have his jugular torn out.

He touched the scar on his cheek.

“Yours is prettier than mine,” she said, and touched it, too.

“Handsomer, you mean. And no it isn’t. I’d rather have yours. Tiger stripes.”

She laughed. “Tiger stripes. You’re so full of it.” She pulled him close and wrapped her arms around his neck. They kissed, and the house was quiet. He’d thought he heard Cassandra come home a while ago, but couldn’t be sure. At the time, he’d been trying to keep an angry Andie from storming out. But Andie thought she’d won. That she’d convinced him to stay himself, and not die and come back and let Hector in. But letting Hector in was the only way. When he was a true hero, she would see that.